Purpose of Marriage #1. God planned our marriage for His pleasure.
That is, the primary goal of the oneness that my wife and I develop is ultimately designed to reflect His glory to the world as we worship. This is why we grow when we pray together, sing together, attend worship services together, read or study together, and talk about spiritual things together.
Our marriage is not simply a relationship in which we get to pursue our personal agendas of feeling good. Our marriage is an opportunity to glorify God and show the world what He’s all about.
Purpose of Marriage #2. God formed our marriage for fellowship, with each other and with Himself.
I say at weddings that a strong marriage is really a marriage of three, not two, because God is always the invisible third member.
That sounds pretty, but we forget it about six minutes after the bridal kiss. But it’s true. God wants spouses to be one, which means to intimately know and to intimately be known by each other. That’s why secrets destroy marriages—not just the scandalous secret sins but the secrets of our hearts—our pain, our temptations, our inadequacies.
Few things are more important to a thriving marriage than honest, open, real, raw, heart-exposing conversation. And He desires for us, as a couple, to know Him intimately. And intimacy is either nurtured by intentional pursuit, or it is stagnating, but it’s never neutral.
Intimacy happens as we make time to be with each other, to talk to each other, to show physical affection and to enjoy physical intimacy with each other. God wants us closer to each other and closer to Himself.
Purpose of Marriage #3. God created our marriage to make us more Christlike.
I am, by nature, a selfish dude. My wife has made an enormous dent in my selfishness. She challenges me to be God’s man, to be more like Jesus, to root out sin, to keep praying, to stay in the Word and to love Jesus fully. And my responsibility is to present her to Jesus someday more mature, more Christlike. That doesn’t happen by controlling or bullying or dominating. It also doesn’t happen accidentally or unintentionally. God’s purpose for marriage is that we each look more like Jesus because of each other.
